Throwback Thursday: Milton Smith, the man who hated Bowling Green

Bowling Green’s historic L&N depot appears many times in Throwback Thursdays, as it represents the highpoint of passenger rail service. Built in 1925 to much fanfare, the station, perhaps, only exists because of the death of one man: Milton Smith, the President of the L&N Railroad.

This Throwback Thursday explores the feud between Bowling Green and Milton Hannibal Smith, a man who certainly held a grudge. 

After working his way up through several railroads, Smith led the L&N for thirty years of important history. Chartered by Kentucky in 1850, the company first connected Louisville to Nashville. Through construction and takeovers, Milton Smith expanded those rails to six thousand miles serving fourteen states. He accomplished all that by not being a nice guy.

Many called the L&N an unfair monopoly, and these feelings burned hot in Bowling Green. According to Jonathan Jeffrey and Michael Dowell in Bittersweet, the city’s many attempts at a competing railroad all failed, and its citizens blamed the L&N. Local legend had Milton Smith arrested and jailed when he was here for a meeting.  A 1946 Daily News article refutes that but quotes eyewitnesses saying he was pelted with eggs instead. Either way, Smith declared that Bowling Green would get nothing from his company so long as he was president. In 1899 when the city again planned competition, Smith moved the Bowling Green railroad shops to Paris, Tennessee.  These facilities repaired trains and employed hundreds. Smith said he would accept the city’s persecution of his company no longer.

Smith also refused to build a new depot in Bowling Green. The city’s 1862 station was too small for the growing community. The dilapidated building couldn’t accommodate the hundreds of passengers who squeezed through daily.

A 1911 petition and indictment got nothing from the L&N but a threat to find a new route to Nashville and build a depot there. Kentucky’s railroad commission nixed that idea and ordered a new station. Yet no depot was built. Milton Smith continued the fight. Fortunately, for Bowling Green rail travelers at least, Milton Hannibal Smith died of a heart attack in 1921, and work began in 1924 on the new depot that still stands on Kentucky street.

Bearing no grudges, the Historic Railpark restored Smith’s presidential train car and exhibits it, right next to the depot he fought so hard against.